Animal Activists Fight for Their Own Rights

Some Utah animal advocates fear being put in a legal cage.

In
1997, the most destructive act of eco-terrorism in Utah history was
committed against the Fur Breeders Agriculture Co-op in Sandy, a
farmer-owned co-op that provides livestock food, when an incendiary
device started a fire that caused about $1 million in damage. Brothers
Douglas Joshua Ellerman, then 21, and Clinton Colby Ellerman, then 22,
later pleaded guilty to explosives charges and served seven years and
five years each in prison, while a federal jury acquitted three others
charged in the incident. None are currently active in local animal
rights groups.

Recently,
five activists were acquitted after being charged with violating Salt
Lake City’s targeted-residential picketing ordinance, passed in July
2007, to manage animal rights protests at the homes of University of
Utah researchers who use animals in their experiments [see “Residential Picketing Case Ends in Acquittals,” May 6, City Weekly]. At least six residential
demonstrations were held after the ordinance passed without arrests,
says acquitted picketer Thomas Risk, but at the seventh demonstration,
16 picketers were cited. Others were convicted, four of whom are
appealing.

But
another case local activists have no direct relationship to has them
worried. The so-called SHAC-7 case, upheld by the U.S. 3rd Circuit
Court of Appeals in December, charged six activists and their
organization—Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty—with animal-enterprise
terrorism and stalking. The group coordinated protests at the homes of
officials from Huntingdon Life Sciences, an animal-testing agency based
in New Jersey.

No
one was charged with actually vandalizing property, issuing violent
threats or trespassing, though prosecutors presented unproven evidence
of those crimes and others. The SHAC-7 were nevertheless convicted of
encouraging and supporting illegal activities, in part, by posting
addresses on its Website and cheering on illegal acts that they say
were committed exclusively by others. The Center for Constitutional
Rights has asked for an en banc review of the 3rd Circuit
panel’s decision, stating Americans have long been allowed to condone
illegal behavior. CCR argues that what the SHAC-7 did with their
Website was “menacing public speech,” which has been protected by the
courts in the past, not a “true threat,” which is not protected.

The
case deeply concerns Young. He’s the closest thing to a SHAC-like entity
in Utah. Since his release from prison, he’s compiled The Blueprint, a
national directory of hundreds of mink farms across the country and
distributes it on his Website. Previous to Hall and Viehl being
arrested, he offered a $2,500 defense fund to anyone arrested in
connection with the mink release. He repeats ALF communiques posted on
other Websites. He publicly endorses illegal actions like mink releases.

Could
he be investigated for supporting illegal activities based on those
facts alone? Industry spokeswoman Teresa Platt is curious about that
very question. As the executive director of Fur Commission USA, she
knows Young by name, as well as Viehl, Hall and others. Indeed, she
thinks the “terrorist” label is appropriate for them and says ranchers
who use animals are a persecuted minority. “They’re just ordinary,
hard-working people trying to figure out how to deal with these crimes of special-interest
domestic terrorism,” she says. She says the roughly 40-year history of
illegal animal-rights actions has contained many violent threats and
some actual violence against ranchers and animal researchers, and thus,
many animal rights actions now carry an implicit threat and
encouragement of violence. “If you read some of [Young’s] statements,
they’re borderline incitement, right? He does offer people money should
they get caught breaking the law. Is that incitement? … He’s probably
had legal advice on what he can and can not say, but he is close.”

The
FBI won’t say how close he is, but it seems the FBI already associates
Young with at least one of the 150 eco-terrorism investigations the FBI
acknowledges are ongoing.

The Feds

In March, Young
moved to Salt Lake City, where most of his eight roommates are
animal-rights activists, vegan and Straight Edge. The entire household
was served a search warrant by the FBI on March 15 that authorized the
agents to seize any materials that may contain information about
Young’s travels, associates, or communications that may be connected to
“animal enterprise terrorism.” Cell phones, iPods, pictures and
computers were taken, not just from Young, but from some of his
roommates.

The warrant was
issued out of the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Southern District of
Iowa where Scott DeMuth, 22, of Minneapolis, is on trial, accused of
vandalizing a University of Iowa animal research laboratory in 2004.
Young says he doesn’t even know DeMuth, nor did he have anything to do
with the Iowa incident, but he blogged critically of the prosecution on
multiple occasions, both before and after the raid. He believes federal
law enforcement is trying not just to hassle and make people distrust
him, but to do that to the entire household of activists. Young’s
roommate, Matt Bruce, and others in the house believe the FBI
purposefully waited for Young to move in—only four days prior to the
raid—in order to instill fear and gather possessions from all of them.
“It’s definitely been an activist house for years,” Bruce said.

Many
of the activists want to utilize all legal means in pursuit of their
goals, and they want clear direction from law enforcement on what, for
example, prompted the FBI to sic an informant on them. How can they
avoid being investigated in the future but still fully flex their
constitutional rights? Is that even possible?

On
the municipal level, they have on multiple occasions asked Salt Lake
City officials for clear guidance on the residential targeted picketing
ordinance and have gotten nothing—no advice and no guidance. Salt Lake
City Prosecutor Sim Gill told City Weekly, “My job is not to give legal advice.”

Especially in the face of the SHAC-7 case and what it represents to them, the activists complain, that’s not good enough.

Assistant
Special Agent in Charge Kenneth Porter, of the FBI field office in Salt
Lake City, compares that sentiment to “children asking their parents
how far they can go without being spanked.” He has parentlike advice as
well: “Don’t push the envelope.”

Local
FBI officials say the line between free speech and illegal support of
others’ crimes is determined on a case-by-case basis, so they can’t
provide a detailed guide on how to approach the line of legality
without crossing it. FBI Chief Division Legael Counsel Trent Pedersen
said that if activists are spotted in the middle of the night near a
mink farm—as Viehl and Hall once were—they might be investigated for
genuine concerns that they are planning to commit a crime—which is
itself a crime under federal law. But what if the activists are in a
researcher’s neighborhood late at night holding candles, which local
activists have done during vigils? Does that justify a full-blown
terrorism investigation involving informants, search warrants and all?
The FBI won’t say.

The
FBI also declined to discuss the local mink releases from 2008, because
even though both Hall and Viehl have pleaded guilty, Hall has yet to be
sentenced, and the bureau rarely comments on active cases. Likewise,
the FBI wouldn’t comment on FBI informants past or present the search
warrant at Young’s home or whether Beckham is listed on a terrorist
watch list.

Pedersen
says no group is targeted because of its political beliefs and says the
bureau does not intimidate political groups with investigation tools
like search warrants. “That happened in the ’70s … but the Attorney
General’s guidance on that is very clear, we’re not authorized to do
that.” If a political group is to be investigated for suspected
criminal activity of its members, he said, “the First Amendment is our
guide” and extra precautions are taken to ensure the investigation
won’t violate anyone’s constitutional rights.

Which
may not be an easy task. Like Young, Viehl and Hall started as
above-ground activists and hung around people from local animal-rights
activist groups. That doesn’t mean anyone else in those groups
encouraged Viehl and Hall to free mink or even knew they planned to do
so, but it could explain—and, for some, justify—the use of informants
and other investigation techniques that intimidate, scare and aggravate
law-abiding activists even as they help determine the identities of
guilty vandals.

Beckham,
for one, worries government obstruction of legal actions is part of the
inspiration for illegal actions like ecoterrorism. He quotes John F.
Kennedy, who said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make
violent revolution inevitable.”